Ort: Seminarraum Forschung I (im Bibliotheksbau)
Link zur Online Teilnahme:

Beitreten Zoom Meeting:
https://zoom.us/j/7543392022?pwd=idcp61CSSfxbZPHaNZaNqpKakOngRH.1&omn=94073510221

Meeting-ID: 754 339 2022
Kenncode: 624841 

Prof. Dr. Alex Wellerstein 
Fallout and fallibility: The secret causes of Castle Bravo nuclear disaster

Abstract:
In March 1954, the United States tested its first deliverable thermonuclear device in a test known as Castle Bravo. While a technical success in terms of weapons development, it was also an experimental disaster: to the surprise of the test planners, contamination from the explosion was deposited over a vast area downwind of the detonation, exposing inhabited atolls in the Marshall Islands, American test and military personnel, and the crew of a Japanese fishing boat to high levels of radioactive fallout. The official explanations offered for the miscalculation — an unexpected change in the wind, a misunderstood fusion reaction — are still repeated today even though they have been definitively shown to be erroneous, and in some cases have been known by government scientists to be erroneous for decades. Instead, the fundamental technical issue was a deep misunderstanding about the nature of fallout formation. This talk will look at what actually went wrong at Castle Bravo, and the organizational, technical, and historical conditions that created and sustained the fatal misunderstanding at the heart of the matter. 

Short Bio:
Alex Wellerstein is a historian of science whose research focuses on the history of nuclear technology. He is an associate professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and presently a visiting researcher at the Nuclear Knowledges program at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po in Paris, France. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His first book, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2021. His second book, The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age, was published by HarperCollins in 2025. He received a BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002, and a PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University in 2010. He is also known for creating the NUKEMAP, the world’s most popular online nuclear weapon effects simulator, in 2012. He frequently writes about post-apocalyptic fact and fiction on his blog Doomsday Machines.